Ashes to Ashes
by xoxoeosvugirl
Summary: One-shot, set some time after the events of Tom Wolfe's "The Bonfire of the Vanities." The tragic and untimely death of Henry Lamb was forgotten by many, but not by all. Annie Lamb, Judge Myron Kovitsky, and Sherman McCoy reflect on the past and how the seemingly unimportant boy from the Bronx affected them.


**A/N: Hello readers of FanFiction! As many of you know, Tom Wolfe's book The Bonfire of the Vanities is my favorite book of all time. Since there is no BotV category here, I'll be putting this under Miscellaneous Books. Enjoy!**

**Plot: **A short one-shot about Henry Lamb, the boy who was killed in Sherman McCoy's infamous Bronx car accident. In this story, the BotV characters think about him and honor his death, in their own unique ways.

**Rating: **T for references to death and crime.

**Pairings: **None

**Genre: **Angst/Hurt/Comfort, even though Bonfire is a crime/political novel.

**Annie Lamb**

They had told her he would be alright.

_It was just a simple fracture, _the doctors at the Bronx County Hospital had said. _He'll have to wear a cast, but he'll be good as new in no time. _

They had lied.

_We're sorry, Mrs. Lamb, your son has suffered from a severe concussion and is now in a coma. We'll see what we can do…_

Henry Lamb was dead. Thanks to Sherman McCoy, the rich, arrogant Wall Street sonofabitch from Park Avenue, her only son was dead.

The McCoy case had been huge for a while. Reporters, especially Peter Fallow of the _City Light, _had swarmed Annie's apartment, pretending to care about her in order to get the inside scoop. The case had blown up, and everyone was eager to see McCoy crash and burn. But even then, even after McCoy was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison, the focus was still on him. There was no mention of Henry Lamb, the true victim in this situation, anywhere.

Oh, sure, the _New York Times _had ran an obituary, right next to the obituaries of Lucy Greenburg, an eighty-five-year-old widow, and George Simpson, a seventy-year-old prostate cancer sufferer. Henry Lamb, dead at age seventeen due to a tragic car accident.

What they didn't understand-all of the reporters and cops and lawyers-was that Annie Lamb had nobody now. There was a reason she was living in the Bronx projects. She had no family to call, nobody to send flowers or a card.

Henry was supposed to break the Lamb cycle of poverty. He was a good student and would be the first in the Lamb family to attend college. Now none of that would happen. Annie would leave the world the way she came in-impoverished and living in a government-subsidized apartment in the South Bronx.

Annie looked up at the stained ceiling of her apartment in despair.

_God, if you're out there, send me some answers, _she prayed. _Send me a sign that things won't always be this way. Please, God, give me some hope._

Nothing came. Annie could hear nothing, other than the faint dripping of the permanently leaky faucet in her kitchen sink.

Just as she'd been for most of her life, Annie Lamb was truly alone.

**Judge Kovitsky**

Myron Kovitsky had been described as many things throughout his lifetime.

To the criminals of the Bronx, the people he worked to put behind bars, he was a prick, piece a' shit, asshole.

To his fellow judges, he was unyielding, determined, responsible.

But the word "emotional" had never been used to describe Judge Kovitsky. In fact, he was rather unemotional. Kovitsky was a no-nonsense type of judge, relying instead on logic, facts and hard evidence to make his decisions.

Yet, in certain situations, usually after a few drinks, he had been known to shed a tear or two. That was exactly what he was doing that night, thinking about the death of young Henry Lamb.

To the naked eye, Henry Lamb was nothing new around the South Bronx. He was a young, black, tough-looking kid. He was muscular, and dressed in jeans and hoodies, most likely purchased from Goodwill or the Salvation Army. The only thing that set him apart was his lack of a criminal record and good performance in school.

Kovitsky had never met the kid in person-he had been assigned to the case of the People of New York versus Sherman McCoy after Lamb had already fallen into a coma. Everything he knew about the kid was what those in the legal world would call _hearsay. _Sure, people had nothing but good things to say about Henry Lamb, but whether that was truly a testament to his character or just a way to throw McCoy under the bus, Kovitsky couldn't tell.

Facts were facts. McCoy was undeniably guilty-though he hadn't been driving the car that struck Lamb, he had chosen to cover it up and entangle himself in a web of lies to protect his precious Park Avenue reputation. After the case had been dismissed the first time, a jury had found him guilty of manslaughter after Lamb died. McCoy had lost everything and now he was headed to jail.

Kovitsky didn't care much for McCoy. He was no hardened criminal, but he definitely needed to learn his lesson. He didn't care much for District Attorney Abe Weiss either. Weiss was a sorry sonofabitch himself, all wrapped up in the race to win the latest election and gain as many votes as possible. Doing the right thing and defending justice in New York City was just a means to an end for Weiss. Kovitsky wasn't sure who was worse-McCoy or Weiss. But he was sure of one thing. Lamb didn't have to die. If it wasn't for greed and deceit, he would still be alive and on his way to building a better life for himself and his mother.

"Dad?" a male voice called from the foyer, adjacent to the den where Kovitsky was sitting and nursing his scotch.

"Yeah, son?" Kovitsky said, coughing gruffly to hide any shakiness in his voice. Kovitsky's son, Michael Kovitsky, was sixteen, a year younger than Henry Lamb had been at the time of his death. He was a good kid: smart, athletic, respectful. Everything you'd expect from the son of a prestigious judge.

"I'm going out. Me and Emily are seeing a movie."

Emily was Michael's girlfriend, who Kovitsky wholeheartedly approved of. She was the female counterpart of his son. A real decent girl.

"Okay. Come back before midnight," Kovitsky said. He paused, the Lamb boy popping into his head once again. Michael grew up under a whole different set of circumstances than Henry, but you never knew what could happen. "And…son?"

"Yeah?" Michael Kovitsky asked, anxious to leave.

"Love you."

"Love you too, Dad," Michael said, slightly surprised. His father wasn't one for affection.

As the door shut behind him, Kovitsky felt his eyes tearing up once again. Both boys were so young, so full of potential…what if it was Michael? What if it had been his own son who was killed?

_Damn. I really need to lay off the fucking scotch, _Kovitsky thought, standing up to pour the rest of his drink down the drain.

**Sherman McCoy**

At one point, Sherman McCoy had shamelessly referred to himself as a Master of the Universe, and lived up to that title nonetheless.

McCoy possessed all of the things that made up, in his opinion, a successful man. He had a great job as a bond trader on Wall Street. He had a beautiful wife and darling daughter, and an even more beautiful mistress.

But greed had gotten the best of him. Greed, sexual desire, ambition…they all led him to want _more, more, more. _And this constant hunger for _more _led him right back into his own personal hell, formally called the New York City criminal justice system.

It started with his arrest. Those two detectives-Detective Martin and Detective Goldberg-had tricked him in thinking his arrest would be nothing more than a formality. What a load of crap that was! He had been cuffed and led into the Bronx police precinct like a cow being taken to the slaughterhouse. And the press had turned the case into a damn media circus.

His life had quickly fallen downhill after that. His wife left him, his friends abandoned him, he lost his job and he was even kicked out of his apartment after an unfortunate confrontation with his landlord and former close friend.

And there he was, sitting in a cell at Rikers Island Correctional Facility, his cellmate snoring above him.

As far as prison life went, he had been expecting much worse. Rapes, beatings, even being killed-he had heard more than enough of what the thugs of Rikers did to _men like him _in prison. Men like him, meaning professional, wealthy, successful men. In the outside world, those things were cause for admiration, but in Rikers, they only made him a punk, the lowest rung on the social ladder an inmate could occupy.

Sure, he'd been heckled at first. And prison life was definitely a shock to the system. He had to adjust to being locked up for much of his time, being stuck in a tiny, barred cell with minimal natural light. The food was horrible, and McCoy's only entertainment was reading the daily news. But above all, the worst thing about Rikers was the stench. The whole place smelled of body odor and failure. The place was filled with those deemed unfit to live in mainstream society; why should it smell any better?

Sherman sighed as he looked up at the bunk above his. Was _this _what his life had come to? Sitting in a cell all day? And what about after he got out? What then? Who would be there for him?

He suddenly thought of Henry Lamb, the boy who was inadvertently killed in a car accident. At first, Sherman had thought him to be a predator. Henry's only words to Sherman were _Yo! You need some help? _But you just couldn't take any chances when it came to the South Bronx, or so Sherman thought.

In hindsight, the boy hadn't looked all that threatening. He was just a kid, an innocent kid. Just trying to survive.

Those words played through Sherman's head. _Just a kid…trying to survive…innocent. _

And now he was dead, all because of Sherman's stupid mistake.

Lying in the bunk bed, on a state-issued mattress in a state-issued white undershirt and orange Department of Corrections flannel pants, Sherman felt himself sympathize with the young man, Henry Lamb. Henry had lost it all. He was dead.

Sherman had lost it all as well. He had no money, no family, no friends.

As he closed his eyes, hoping to get some sleep before he had to face another day, he found himself wondering which was worse: to be dead in the physical sense, or to lose everything and have to continue to wake up to a grim future.

At that moment, Sherman would've gladly chosen to be dead.


End file.
